Tag: peace

Good morning, would you do me a favor? Grab a cup of coffee and sit down with me. Pour a nice shot of creamer in it; add a bit of sugar, if you like, but sit down and talk with me. I’ve been thinking and wonder how many of you are worried about content. Maybe you are worried about something large or something small; we always seem to find time to worry about something. In order for you to feel contentment today, what would have to happen? Take a couple of minutes and think, “What would make me feel content today?”

Is it something that you can control? Is it something that’s really important in your big picture? Is it someone else’s behavior, or someone else’s thoughts?

This isn’t my typical way of writing a blog. I have been putting all of them in a word document, so that I can print them off for family. I have made changes back and forth sharing my story and trying to encourage you in yours. In the process realized I Havent addressed feeling satisfied. Contentment is so important for our survival. Stress is a huge cause of so many diseases and problems in our lives.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to one of my sons about a new relationship. He said, “Mom, we are both really content.” I felt so much peace, when he made that statement; to have contentment in any area of our lives and not want more? His statement got me to thinking about my life and what makes me content. The forerunner is when our children and grandchildren are safe and healthy. I always think happiness can be a rollercoaster, but their health brings me contentment.

Then I began thinking about my children’s level of contentment, and friends levels, the nations.. I spend a lot of time thinking! So now I am asking all of you in writing, “What makes you content?” Do you feel the need for more money, more sex, more excitement, more respect, more job satisfaction, a happier marriage, good health? If you think about it, and formulate a plan, maybe you can achieve it. If you are looking for the Vikings to win a Superbowl, well I hate to tell you, but you have no control and may never feel content! (I am writing this the week after the Eagles won, good for them…. :)) What exactly is it that you want?

Prioritize: Would you give up money for your health, or your children’s health? Would you give up job satisfaction for more money? Are you willing to give up respect for more control? Would you give up your health for anything? Are you doing these things?

I don’t expect answers back. A friend recently told me that even the blogs she can’t necessarily identify with, make her think.. I really like that she would think about what I write; that’s all I ask, not that you agree or have a “wow” feeling, but that you think.

Writing about divorce is as personal to me as writing about abuse or death. It sends a weight to the pit of my stomach. I don’t write other people’s stories and that’s why I’m cautious about this subject. There wasn’t just me. There was a spouse and there were children. Little children who deserved better.

When we pick spouses, we base that decision on many things, love, lust, need, fear, compatibility, escape, ambition, life goals, family suitability… When you are young, I had just turned 19, you don’t know yourself and you certainly are clueless about who you will become. The newsflash is your intended spouse has the same feelings. You start out with plans and they go awry, you fight, and pout and beg; there are a few good weeks, and the cycle starts over again. Eventually someone says enough, or one or both of you make decisions that most people can’t come back from.

When my first marriage ended, I told the children. One was very young, one was happy go lucky, and one cried and told me it was his fault. When I assured him that it wasn’t, he said, “Mom, I’ve been praying to God, that you and Dad would get divorced.” I knew that I didn’t have a choice, no child should bare that kind of responsibility, to want to protect his family so much that he should be pushed to pray for a divorce, in order to have peace.

No one starts out in a marriage planning on a divorce. We all start out wide eyed and innocent, hoping.. no planning…. on the best. We bring children into it and sometimes we fail. Typically it’s not just one spouse who fails, both play a part, I firmly believe though that one person can’t make a marriage work by themselves, not year after year. There has to be a commitment by both to the marriage, to the family and to the commitment. In a bad marriage there is no 50/50, it’s 75/20 or sometimes even 90/10, but that isn’t sustainable without someone’s hurt getting too deep.

When I moved to Williston, after my divorce, I started dating and eventually remarried. I remember distinctly, a couple of women in town who had been divorced twice. It had been and I’m sure continues to be challenging to be a divorce’ once, let alone twice. The stigma, even in this day and age, continues to suggest a harlot, a red letter A, plastered firmly on your forehead. I smile when I write this because it’s archaic, but yet sadly in small towns, it’s true. I looked at those women and said to myself, “That will never be me.” You know how God loves that when you make ludicrous statements like that. God says, “Watch this.”

Well watch I did, not just watch, but I experienced my second divorce. I was one of “them.” I had joined a club unwillingly; oh I had initiated the divorce, because I had apparently finessed the talent of poor decision making. I dated a bit and frankly I lost my appetite for it quickly. I had learned a lot and was still learning, wanted to learn, wanted to and had decided that being single could be great. I learned to enjoy being single; the freedom was something I hadn’t experienced before. I learned to survive divorce.

Do the children survive? They do, some more quickly than the rest. My children’s father and I were decent divorced parents; we kept the kids out of most things. Children are smart though and they always know more and see more than you think. If my mother had divorced my father, would my life have been better? Sometimes the damage is already done and it’s hard to know. I bare full responsibility for my poor decisions. In a world where everyone likes to shirk their faults and shift the blame to their pasts, or abusers, I won’t. I could have done better. I have done better. 🙂

My Mom and Dad moved back on to the family farm, when I was about four. Dad had worked in the oilfield, but he wanted to farm. Grandpa Pat was ready to slow down, and then died. We moved into the old farm house. It was a sea foam green two story house, that originally only had an outhouse. Grandpa and Grandma had taken a porch and made it into a small den, bathroom and enlarged the kitchen area. It sat on a dirt basement, with a coal burning stove that heated the house, sometimes. In the coldest days of the winter months, we would all sleep in the living room, with a blanket blocking off the kitchen-half of the house, the door shut to the upstairs, and the furnace full of coal, trying to heat that little bit of house we were sleeping in. We didn’t mind much; we were warm, and it was “camping out” to us kids.

The only thing we had to worry about on those nights, is that the mice wanted to be warm too. They would come up from the basement, and risk life-or-death, by running around. They especially liked to surprise you in the bathroom. I would be sitting on the toilet, and a mouse, or two would come out and look at me. We both had our jobs to do-me finishing my toileting and them trying to survive.

Dad would periodically catch a bull snake and release him into the basement, to try and control the population, but never seemed to make much difference. It only made going down to get canned goods more interesting, as I was terrified, the mouse would survive and I would not.

Dad later gave the house away to the mover, who sold or gave it to someone in the White Earth Valley. Dad told me in later years they used it for their animals. We built a new house, whose only infiltrators were salamanders, or a calf or lamb, who were brought in by the humans.

I was lucky enough to have repeat performances of mouse escapades, when I lived in a 12×60 trailer house in an oil camp, in 1978-1982. I was visiting with my mother-in- law on the phone, when I saw the tinfoil move, that was covering the roast beef on the counter. I looked again in time to see a mouse pull a piece of beef off the plate, slide it across a bit of counter and take it down behind the stove. There were times I would be laying in bed nursing my oldest son, and a mouse would come out from his hiding and look up at me, with no fear in his eyes. We were outnumbered.

When we sold that trailer house, very soon after that, I pictured it going down the road to Billings, Montana; the mice waving goodbye as they began their new adventure.

An interesting insight into my life on the farm? I have tried to give you a few of them, so you know who I am; based on my experiences you can see when we are similar. So you can believe me, when I tell you I understand where many of you have been.

I was watching TV one morning, working on a Soduko puzzle. I’m trying to keep my brain more toned than my body. The announcement came on that Charlie Rose had been suspended. I set my puzzle down and tried to take it in; I’m obviously not one of those people oblivious to abuse; I’ve had my share of it, in several different versions, but Charlie Rose… I didn’t see that coming. Many of the broadcasters have made the point of saying, how do we balance our feelings for someone we care about, who has done something so wrong. I don’t care if it’s the Senator from Michigan, or Alabama, or our favorite morning news commentator, the President, or family member. It hurts when someone we respect, betrays trust.

How do we balance our feelings? By lashing out at others? The women in this case, and there have been men in other cases as well, are like mice…They for whatever reason, have held on for five, or ten, or 40 years. Their lives were changed, but they survived by doing what they had to do. Victims are like mice, stories of abuse are like mice…if there is one, there is more.

The stories in the news have been mostly sexual abuse of power, but my analogy can be any form of abuse. I have thoughts and prayers in my heart right now for people who are physically, emotionally, and verbally abused as well. Verbal and emotional abuse leave no outward physical scars, but the damage is so difficult to overcome. Please don’t become so comfortable with it, because of your family, or culture that you don’t pay attention to the mice.

Sometimes raising kids is challenging. No one really trains us how to raise our children; of course there was Dr. Spock, and then someone else and then someone else who disagreed with them. In the 70’s we didn’t swaddle our babies, much to our mother-in-laws chagrin, and now my grandson is swaddled! Who knew?! We learned from our parents, who did the best they could based on their parents. It was either good, or bad or somewhere in between. We all do our best and hopefully our children survive the job we do.

If we are really lucky, the prize for surviving parenthood is when you get to be a grandparent. Could we love any one person any more? I think it’s because they are our second chance; to soften, to say yes more, to hug more, and for a moment of time to slip back into silliness.

Grandparents tend to be ferociously protective, because we are older and most likely don’t care as much what others think-or maybe it’s because we are wiser and more aware of the dangers that are out there. I have made it perfectly clear what would happen if someone tried to hurt a grandchild. I don’t mean helicopter parent protectiveness, where children aren’t allowed to feel loss, heartbreak, or failure. I mean if someone is stupid enough to try and hurt them physically.

My oldest grandson was having a bit of anxiety and decided to talk to me about it. He was probably nine. His mom was newly divorced and for some reason, he was worried someone would come in to the house and take him. He said, “Grandma, what would you do if someone kidnapped me?” I said, “I would take every cent I have to hunt them down; we would get you back and then Grandma would kill them.”

He nodded his head, “That’s what Mom said you would say.”

“Feel better now?”

“Yep,” and off he went to play.

What a great feeling for a child to think his grandma would protect him at any cost. I don’t know if he thought my comment was metaphorical or literal, but I know and so do you.

I would do fine in prison; I could teach classes, start a book group, discuss feelings……

The handprint quilted into the quilt above is mine. Surrounding it are the handprints of my husband and grandchildren. Twenty-seven years ago, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a pick-up truck headed to Wyoming. We were delivering some oilfield supplies. My children’s father was driving; it was late at night; the marriage was failing and I was thinking about my friend who was dying of cancer. The idea for the quilt came to me; I don’t know how or why, but it did, and I started it the next week. Different shapes, of different colors, were hand appliquéd onto a white piece of fabric. I bought the thread intending to hand quilt it, with the different colors running through the quilt, an alternating triangle border pulling it together.

I often wondered why, when you would hear the stories of quilts, uncompleted, “discovered” in an attic, or box in a closet, they weren’t finished. I learned, and understand now, life has it’s own plan sometimes, and it might not include finishing a quilt. I carried the quilt, and it’s thread, from home to home, town to town, from the end of one marriage, through the failing of another, until now. Children grew up and had children of their own; I found a good marriage, a happy place and decided I was ready to finish it.

The quilt like my life, metamorphised a bit; I needed to find a couple of replacement triangles that almost match; a couple spools of thread disappeared and had to be replaced; the stitches are bigger, and there were stains from the colored fabric bleeding onto the white. My quilt and I have aged. The colors match others I have chosen for our house, it will still keep a child, or grandchild warm, and if my husband wants to snuggle under it, while the fireplace warms up the house, it will keep us warm as well, while reminding us of the love of the handprints-the best warmth of all.

Our pasts never really leave us. We can modify them, redirect them and flat out lie about them, but they are still our pasts. Bring your past into your future, embrace it and quilt it together with your future. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, with many things to be thankful for, both past and present.

Thanksgiving is coming up soon and it always gets me to thinking about what I’m truly thankful for: This week I am thankful for forgiveness.

I’m not a perfect person as my children like to tell me regularly. They tease me about my foibles, the eccentricities of their mother, and my outright mistakes. (Only they are allowed to do this though, they would set anyone else straight who criticized me.) I have had to ask for their forgiveness and I am so thankful that they have given it to me. I can’t imagine living with the guilt for the rest of my life, if they said, “No, we can’t forgive you, you are unforgiveable.” Their father and I made mistakes in our marriage, ending it in divorce, and today respect each other and have given forgiveness. Our children have benefitted from that and learned from it. We are a family who believes in forgiveness.

I had coffee today with a classmate from my high school days. We talked about forgiveness and how it correlates in today’s society. I shared with her that it upsets me that our entire society seems to have a chip on their shoulder and is unable to give forgiveness. What we have is a society of victims who can’t give forgiveness, choose not to move forward, and are unable to be healthy survivors. Here I am on my high horse, I know. There are wonderful examples of groups of peoples who were treated horribly in history and have moved on: the Italians, the Irish and the Chinese were treated as slaves, they mined and built our railroads receiving little or nothing for pay. They were spit on, beat up and called names. They are survivors.

When you act like a victim; people treat you like a victim; you are perceived as weak and unable to take care of yourself. Look around you. Some of you will think I am talking about a particular race, or culture, but I’m not. You see victims everywhere, regardless of whatever stereotype you want to name. I’m reading a book right now about coal miners in the Appalachians who were treated horribly.. Many moved on and survived; many didn’t.

I understand forgiveness, because I have had to ask for it and I have given it; both are tough. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you forget, as my children example shows, but forgiveness means you get peace. The negative energy it takes to not forgive, becomes positive energy, you get to move forward.

My Dad is in assisted living and I stopped up an visited with him the other night for an hour or so. When I left, I said, “Dad, I’m going to be gone for a couple of weeks, but will see you when I get back. He said, “Ok, well I will miss you.” “I love you Dad.” “I love you too Wanny.” Our family knows forgiveness. I know forgiveness. I wish it for you, with all of my heart.

Trust; the way a child feels about their parent, a dog feels about its owner, a child towards a grandparent, a spouse to spouse….. how do we define it or explain how we lose it?

I don’t know what was wrong with me, when I was a kid. I loved to jump… I was like a little Mexican Jumping Bean… My Dad tells the story of standing in front of the barn working on something; I had climbed to the top of the old two story barn; was only about five, and said, “Daddy should I jump?” He said, “I don’t care.”, never in a million years thinking I would. He said he saw a shadow come over his shoulder, and he looked and I had landed in the hay pile next to him. I jumped off of everything…one afternoon I was practicing my jumping bean routine and Dad had tired of it. He came upstairs, in our old farm house and said, “I’m going to break you of your jumping.” He proceeded to have me jump off of everything: beds, dressers, chairs, and finally the banister of the stairs. He caught me every time, until the bannister. I jumped and he stepped back. When I landed on the floor, I asked him why he hadn’t caught me. He said, “Don’t trust anyone, not even your Papa.” He told me later that his father had said the same thing to him, at some point in his life. I understood little of trust at that age, and only thought about it retrospectively later. How sad it is not to be able to trust.

I don’t jump anymore: I’m afraid of heights and would probably break an ankle, or a hip. 🙂 I’m not very good at trusting either. Do you trust? Who would you let catch you if you jumped. I have seen the trust fall demonstrated at conferences. You fall back into a colleagues arms…. scary!

I do still try…trusting with bits at a time…my husband, our children, (I trust most dogs!) working on it! Working on trust leads to disappointment sometimes. My oldest son told me that I always expect people to do the right thing and that’s why I’m disappointed. I do expect people to do the right thing and I’m tough; I can stand a little disappointment as long as there’s the chance… Trust!

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

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